London private school to make uniforms gender-neutral, boys to start wearing skirts

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A top private school in London has promised to introduce gender-neutral uniforms in a bid to support the soaring number of students questioning their identity.

Highgate School, in North London, is seeking to abolish the distinction between girls’ and boys’ dress, and introduce a mix-and-match uniform that would accommodate all pupils.

While girls at Highgate currently have the choice between gray trousers, dark blue jackets and ties, boys do not have the option to wear the same gray pleated skirts that girls can wear.

They also have to wait until they reach the age of 16 before they can get their ears pierced.

“This generation is really questioning [if we are] being binary in the way we look at things,” Adam Pettitt, headmaster at Highgate, told the Times.

However, Pettitt added that some former pupils have spoken out against the new rules amid concerns they could be misleading.

“They write in and say if you left children to their own devices they would grow up differently and you are promoting the wrong ideas,” Pettitt said.

The headmaster said schools are having to mediate between parents and students. Parents often don’t know that their children have queried their gender with school counselors.

Parents would be consulted before any decision is made final, Pettitt said, but he stressed that if some boys feel “happier and more secure in who they are” by wearing skirts, then “it must be a good thing

The school already allows for children to ask teachers to call them by the opposite sex, while one boy was also given permission to wear a dress at school.

Source: Reuters